


Liebe geht durch den Magen

by yeats



Category: Football RPF, German National Football Team RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Friends to Lovers, M/M, hipster barista Mesut Özil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:48:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeats/pseuds/yeats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Philipp Lahm runs a bakery/coffee shop/potential hot new spoken word performance space. Only one of those is fully by choice, but fortunately, he doesn't have to take care of it all alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liebe geht durch den Magen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [louis_quatorze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/louis_quatorze/gifts).



> The title is a German proverb that means, "Love goes through the stomach," or, "the way to the heart is through the stomach."

**04:15**

The sun was hours away from cresting over the horizon, a thick layer of fog lying over the ground like a soft white skirt, when Philipp unlocked the doors to the bakery and let himself inside.

He'd forgotten his hat and scarf in the car and his skin prickled against the cold, but he paid it no mind, navigating around the dark forms of stacked chairs and tables with practiced ease to flip on the light behind the counter. The shop jumped into being before him: the long, gleaming rows of display cases, empty at the moment (but not for long); the serene photographs of alpine landscapes mounted on the walls; the golden, aerodynamic monstrosity of an espresso machine that Philipp had purchased six months ago and to whose presence he still hadn't fully acclimated yet. He took a moment, as he did every morning, to appreciate the sight in its purest state, before the bustle of customers, employees, and the day's traffic. All these years later, and a part of him was still amazed that it belonged to him.

A flash of red by one of the cash registers caught his eye. He reached over and pulled out a red-and-white striped scarf from where it had been wedged between the machine and the wall, nearly out of sight -- likely forgotten by a customer the day before, and left in case they returned looking for it. The rich, supple cashmere slipped between his gloved fingers. The faint scent of chestnuts clung to the material.

He made a note to ask Thomas or Bastian about it, and headed into the kitchen.

Philipp's mind rattled off a checklist almost as long as his arm: heat up the deck oven; check on the dough he'd left overnight to prove; start the first batches of buns, rolls and pastries that the morning customers would come in seeking in short order; prep the loaves of bread he'd left to rise; check on his ingredient levels and make sure that there's enough for the rest of the day…

But before all that, another daily tradition awaited. Peeling his gloves off with his teeth, he tucked them in his pocket and hung his coat on the hook next to the door, and pulled on his apron. Next, he turned to his two ovens: the gigantic, hulking mass of the bread-baking deck oven that took up half the room, and the taller, almost svelte convection oven for pastries and cakes beside it. The twin beasts, Thomas called it, with a tone that was half jest and half genuine fear. 

Philipp ran his hands over the gleaming chrome exteriors, touching each of the door handles in the exact right order. "Hello, old friends,” he said, as he did every day. "It's good to see you."

He knew it was an odd habit, perhaps even a bit crazy. There was a reason, after all, he only spoke to the ovens when he was alone. Not even Bastian, who had been his first employee and who always came in early as well to help with the baking, knew about it, and Bastian knew almost everything about him by now. And honestly, it wasn't like the rest of the staff didn't have their own quirks; a part of him suspected that they all worked in a bakery because their oddities precluded them from more traditional gainful employment. Still, Philipp liked his privacy, and he liked his routines, and this fit both of them.

"All right," he said, to himself this time, slapping his hands on his apron front. "Let's get started."

 

**

 

**06:25**

"Four dozen salted pretzels. Four dozen sweet pretzels -- those are with cinnamon and currants today, so make sure that whoever's working the counter knows to ask about allergies. Six dozen vanilla cream Berliners. Twelve dozen springerle, in vanilla and chocolate --" Philipp took a deep breath to continue his list of the day's items for sale, but Bastian cut him off.

"Boss," he said, with the easy smile that seemed never too far from view, "everything's going to be on display. Like it always is. We don't exactly need to write up a menu."

Half an hour before opening, things always seemed to get a little hectic for Philipp: a batch of rolls left too long in the oven so that their top crusts were too brown and didn't match the rest of their golden-hued peers, or a miscount of the bread dough left them with fewer braided loaves than they usually sold, or any of a million other little catastrophes ready to strike. Philipp considered himself ready for all of it. He'd had to put out bigger fires than that -- both literally and figuratively -- in those first, lean years when it was just him working the shop.

But then his parents had convinced him to place a hiring ad in the local newspaper, and Bastian had shown up, blond and beaming and utterly impervious to panic. Sure, his baking skills were limited to what he'd picked up in his Tante Angela's kitchen, which meant they'd had to work on scaling his abilities upward for a commercial establishment, but even back then he'd more than made up for any deficiencies in the kitchen with his seeming uncanny ability to recast any situation in a less despairing light. Now, over a decade later, he and Philipp had developed into a well-oiled machine of focused anxiety and self-assured confidence.

Philipp frowned. "But we do need someone to update the specials board with today's signature cupcake, as soon as Thomas -- "

"Hey, hey, hey!" As if on cue, Thomas appeared, shouldering open the back door and letting in a gust of frigid air that smelled vaguely of marzipan and peppermint. With a long knitted scarf that trailed dangerously around his legs and an oversized coat that seemed to have been mis-buttoned in at least two places, he looked like a character out of a children's book: a scarecrow come to life, perhaps, or an especially shabbily dressed snowman. Balanced in his arms were four white paper boxes; Philipp's breath caught in his throat as Thomas tried to manoeuver around the trays of cooling pastries, nearly falling on his face and dropping his cargo at least twice. 

Finally, he set the boxes down with a flourish. "I come bearing gifts!"

Beside him, Philipp heard Bastian let out a breath as well. "Nicely done." 

Thomas grinned, and doffed his hat, dropping into an exaggerated bow -- and nearly taking out a row of sticky buns with his elbow.

"So, Herr Mad Scientist, what's today's creation?"

Philipp rolled his eyes. Surely the space they saved in having Thomas bake his signature cupcakes from home wasn't worth the daily barrage of bad jokes about Thomas's secret lair, or the insecurity of not knowing what they would be selling until moments before the shop opened. When he raised both these issues, however, he was consistently overruled.

Thomas flipped open the lid. "Presenting: Pretty in Pink Champagne cupcakes, and Chocolate Hazelnut Hedgehog cupcakes!"

Philipp and Bastian exchanged a look. Philipp gestured to Thomas, urging Bastian to step in, but Bastian only grinned. "You're the boss," he mouthed.

Phillip sighed, and turned back to where Thomas was waxing rhapsodically about his creations. 

"…See, the hazelnut frosting, which is part Nutella and part buttercream, is piped to look like little spikes, and I used dark chocolate ganache to draw on the eyes and the mouth, and there’s also -- "

"Thomas." Philipp placed a hand on his arm. "They look stunning, as always."

"And they taste even better." Thomas pulled out two sample cupcakes, smaller than the rest. "Go ahead, try."

"I'll try the hazelnut one," Philipp said. "But in case you didn't notice, this is a _family_ bakery -- as in, we serve people of all ages. I can't exactly sell booze-laced cupcakes to the kids who come in after school, can I?"

"Well, you _could,_ " Bastian said dryly. "It would probably just be the last thing you sold. And also possibly the last meal you ate as a free man for a while."

Thomas looked horrified. "Of course they're not laced with booze! There's only a little bit of champagne in the batter, so that the bubbles will make them fluffy and light. All the alcohol gets baked away when they go in the oven."

Philipp frowned, wary. "Are you sure?" 

"On my life," Thomas said, eyes wide. "You know I'd never do anything like that."

And the thing was, Philipp believed him. Thomas might give the impression that he wasn't fully in control of his limbs at all times -- once, while he and Philipp reviewed their accounting ledgers and shared a few Franziskaners, Bastian had described him as a marionette with a few tangled strings -- but he was a masterful baker, the closest thing Philipp had ever seen to a prodigy. It might have been the same sentimental streak that made Philipp talk to his ovens in private, but Thomas always seemed to have a special rapport with his cupcakes, more like that of an old master with his paintings than a simple craftsman with his product. Thomas knew what he was doing in the kitchen, and he took his work seriously.

"All right," Philipp allowed at last. "But we'll put up some kind of warning, just in case -- I don't want some sour-faced old Hausfrau coming in and claiming we corrupted her innocent angels with our evil wares."

Thomas nodded. "I'll add it to the board when I write the specials." 

After he'd gone to fetch their easel and chalk, Philipp gave in and peeled back the wax paper wrapping of the sample cupcake. It was, as expected, absolutely delicious.

"That fucking son of a bitch," he groaned, mouth full of cupcake.

Bastian favored him with a smile, his eyes warm. "You're going soft in your old age," he said.

If Philipp blushed at that, he was fully prepared to deny it later. "Fifteen minutes till we open," he said, and went back to his prep work.

 

**

 

**11:08**

By eleven, the stampede of morning commuters rushing to grab a quick pastry on their way to the office usually petered out, giving Philipp a chance to take a breath and turn to the rest of the day's tasks. While the shop mostly conducted its business via counter service, they also received a steady stream of advance orders. Today, he had two birthday cakes to contend with: one a solid, traditional Bavarian chocolate torte, and the other a more complicated merengue and strawberry construction for an especially exacting eleven year-old who fancied herself a foodie.

He was just about to start whipping the egg whites for the merengue when the door separating the kitchen and the shop proper swung open.

"Got a minute, boss?" Bastian said. 

For a moment, he hesitated, thinking of the labyrinthine process to come, but Bastian knew better than to waste his time when he was on a cake-baking mission. And beside him stood Mesut, hovering uncertainly in the threshold, which settled the matter. 

In the five months since Philipp had hired him, Mesut had barely uttered six sentences. From what Philipp had observed, he was scarcely more communicative with the customers, dashing off lattes and other caffeinated concoctions with what had first seemed to Philipp to be an alarming lack of investment. Bastian had promised him that was part of the proper barista aesthetic -- and in his defense, the steady stream of regular customers seemed to take his attitude in stride. Sometimes Philipp marveled at the drastic uptick in graphic t-shirts and elaborate facial hair since Mesut started working here, but he wasn’t one to turn away good money. 

"Sure thing," he said, and stepped back from his prep table. "What's going on?"

Bastian gave Mesut a subtle nudge. 

Mesut cleared his throat. “My friend’s writing group is looking for a venue to host their monthly spoken word readings. I think we should do them here.”

A long silence greeted his words.

“This is some kind of prank, isn’t it,” Philipp said at last. 

“Hear him out,” Bastian chided gently. Philipp rolled his eyes, but waved Mesut to continue.

“We could do it during the weekend, when we usually don’t have as many customers, to drum up business. My friend, he usually charges a small cover fee to attend, and he said he would be willing to split it with you. And you could sell pastries and coffee in between the performances.” Philipp hadn't noticed Mesut's hint of an accent before, a slight Ruhrgebiet shading to his vowels. Still, it wasn't like the rest of them had room to judge. He wondered, a bit abashedly, whether the silence that he’d mistaken for aloofness was really just nerves.

Philipp looked to Bastian. “Is this your doing?”

After all, the whole reason he’d bought the espresso machine in the first place was Bastian’s insistence that there was a market for fancy whipped drinks with exotic names and complicated recipes alongside their regular fare. When neither of them had turned out to be any good at making said drinks, it had also been Bastian who found Mesut. 

“No, but I think he’s got a good point.” Bastian touched Mesut’s shoulder. Philipp told himself the moment of alarm he felt was at the thought of Bastian getting baking flour on Mesut’s pristine Joy Division t-shirt. “We’re doing well with the coffee. We might as well try to keep it up.”

“We’re selling double as much premium roast as we expected to,” Mesut chimed in.

"Already?" Philipp said. "I thought that we priced that at 25% higher than the normal brew."

"We did. But with the shoppers at the Christmas market stopping by, and all the seating space we have, lots of people seem to be coming in to sit and savor their drink, rather than just take it to go on their way somewhere else." Mesut took a deep breath. “I’m sure we could keep up the sales into the New Year if we found another reason to keep up foot traffic on the weekend.”

Philipp looked between them both: Mesut, his normally distant affect barely hiding his anxious eagerness; and Bastian, beaming at him like a proud mom. 

“What’s your friend’s name?” 

“Sami.” 

Bastian’s smile grew even wider.

“Tell him to come by tomorrow, after closing. We can talk about it then.” Philipp told himself it would be cruel to describe Mesut’s reaction as his eyes bulging out of his head, given the status quo, but. Well. 

“Th- thank you so much, sir.”

Philipp waved a hand. “I didn’t say yes. I said we’ll talk.”

Mesut nodded. “Of course.”

“Just to see if we can make it financially feasible. I’m not making any promises.”

“I completely understand.”

“You’ll tell your friend that?”

Another nod.

After another round of profuse gratitude, Philipp and Bastian managed to send Mesut back to bail out Thomas behind the counter. Philipp went back to his cake -- only to stop moments later at the feel of Bastian’s gaze, heavy as a warm hand on the back of his neck.

“What?” He turned around, adopting a crabbiness he didn’t feel.

“You know, that’s two of your employees you’ve made very happy today,” Bastian said. “I think that’s a new record.”

Philipp shrugged. “Guess I’m just a nice guy.”

“You are,” Bastian said steadily. There was something in his tone Philipp didn’t quite understand, dancing just beyond his grasp.

“Is there anything I can do to make you happy?” His voice came out differently from how he meant it -- deeper and darker, like it had been left too long to prove in his throat. It wasn’t a voice he recognized. 

But Bastian just gave a little laugh, and swiped a strawberry from the bowl by Philipp’s side.

“Just keep doing what you’re doing, boss,” he said, and popped the fresh fruit in his mouth, crushing it between his fine, white teeth.

On his way back out front, he clasped his hand over Philipp’s shoulder, just as he had Mesut’s moments earlier -- leaving both a patina of flour, and a scalding heat, behind.

 

**

 

**13:49**

With a satisfying, definitive _clang_ , Philipp closed the door of the convection oven on the Bavarian chocolate cake. He checked the temperature settings one last time, and set the timer to go off at the precisely right moment. 

“Now it’s all up to you,” he said, patting one chrome flank. “You just do what you do best.”

A cough. 

Bastian stood in the doorway again, hands in his pockets and his face schooled to a perfectly neutral expression.

Philipp stared at him. “Can I help you?” He ticked his eyebrow upward in precise increments towards maximum intimidation.

“Hey, take it easy. No need to strain something up there.” Bastian held up his hands. “I just thought I’d come in and tell you that something ridiculous is definitely about to go down with Thomas and this guy he’s got a crush on, in case you wanted to intervene.”

Philipp thought for a moment. “Can we take video for posterity?”

Bastian scoffed and held up his iPhone. “It’s like you don’t even know me,” he said, grinning, and held the door for Philipp.

Out front, Philipp immediately spotted the impending catastrophe: a tall young man in a dark pea coat with a blue scarf, standing at the counter. There was something faintly familiar about the cast of his wholesome, open features and the way his eyes scanned the specials board. Not one of their everyday customers, but definitely a regular…

Philipp clutched at Bastian’s elbow. “Isn’t that the guy who always comes in looking for.…”

Philipp could feel the vibrations of Bastian’s stifled laughter. “Yes. His name’s Manuel. Lovely guy. Now, _shhhh_ ” he hissed, in what obviously was meant to be a whisper, and hit record on his phone.

Neither Thomas nor the customer -- Manuel -- paid them any heed, however. “Hey, man!” Thomas said, barely clinging to the professional demeanor Philipp had worked so hard to instill in him. Even at an oblique angle, his smile was blinding. “What can I get for you?”

“Hi.” Manuel didn’t seem put off by Thomas’s exuberance. In fact, Philipp could see him lean a little closer, a careful calibration of his body language that belied his large frame. “So I saw today’s cupcake specials on Twitter --”

(“We have a Twitter?” Philipp whispered. Bastian somehow managed to poke him sharply in the ribs while holding his phone level.)

“--and I was wondering about the chocolate ones with hazelnut?”

“Yeah, the Chocolate Hazelnut Hedgehog cupcakes! They’re really great -- I mean, I hope you think so.” Thomas gave a high, nervous chuckle that was utterly unrecognizable from his usual hoarse braying, and gently tapped Manuel’s sleeve. 

His fingers lingered there longer than they had any right to, but Manuel didn’t seem to mind. “I guess I’ll have to try one,” he said, a teasing lilt to his voice.

“I guess you will,” said Thomas with another little laugh, and reached into the display case. Bastian’s camera swung around, catching both the arch of Thomas's spine, and Manuel’s blatantly speculative gaze. 

“Here we are,” Thomas said, reemerging with a cupcake. Only he hadn’t followed protocol and packaged it up; instead, it lay in his hand, the tiny hedgehog looking even smaller in his large palms.

“It looks amazing,” Manuel gushed. Thomas’s cheeks pinked. “How much do I owe you?” 

“Why don’t you try it first?” Thomas offered. “See if it’s to your taste.”

Philipp heard his own horrified gasp as if it had come from someone else. Bastian clenched his free hands in the strings of Philipp’s apron; the tight grip was the only thing that prevented Philipp from leaping across the room and stopping what was clearly the opening scene from a terrible porno as Thomas _unpeeled the cupcake from its wrapper and held it up the mouth of a paying customer._

Manuel took a bite. His eyes went wide.

“Whoa,” he said, around a mouthful of cupcake, “is there _Nutella_ in here?”

“Yes!” Thomas crowed. “I remembered how much you like it, so when I was trying to come up with something that would go well with our other cupcake of the day, I thought I could try and surprise you….” He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a register that only Manuel could hear. From the blush that spread across Manuel’s cheeks, that was probably for the best.

“Oh my god.” Philipp gasped. “Thomas baked cupcakes _of seduction_!”

Bastian nodded. “He’s officially my new hero.”

“I can’t believe he would do that to cupcakes!”

Bastian just threw his head back and laughed. 

By this point, a small queue had developed behind Manuel. None of these other patrons seemed to be struck with the same mixture of horror and fascination by the courtship unfolding in front of them; Philipp saw an old woman pointedly glance at her watch. Thomas, however, seemed to have given up on even the pretense of professionalism; he was too busy dabbing a fleck of icing off Manuel’s cheek to notice when Bastian carefully maneuvered him out of the way to take over the main cash register. 

Bastian shot him a grin over his shoulder. “Kids these days,” he said, and turned back to take the next order. 

Despite all the tasks that awaited him back in the kitchen, Philipp stood and watched a bit longer: Thomas and Manuel, tucked in their own little world; and Bastian’s strong hands and sure smile, saving the day once again. 

 

**

 

**16:21**

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Bastian left work early to attend a class at the Münchner Volkshochschule.

“It’s all about business administration,” he’d explained to Philipp back in August, when he first requested to change his hours. “How to make a business plan, how to evaluate the terms of a loan, that sort of thing. It’s good stuff to know, and it might come in useful someday --”

“Someday in the distant future, I hope,” Philipp had quickly interjected.

Bastian blushed. “Yeah, of course. You know I love working here. But anyway, maybe I could take on extra hours over the weekend to make up for the two afternoons?”

At the time, Philipp had pretended to mull over his decision for a day, but in truth there had never been any question of him denying Bastian his request. Philipp had always known about the part of himself that was selfish and envious, that rejected change and closed itself off like a bivalve in deep water. The specter of Bastian leaving to start a new, more glamorous life somewhere else gave that part of him almost enough fuel to take over, to pull the rest of him down with it. But even then, he couldn’t let himself deny Bastian any of the happiness and success he deserved. He couldn’t be that guy. 

So they figured things out, and they got by. In exchange for six hours during the week without Bastian, Philipp got Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings with him. And during those afternoons when Bastian was gone, Philipp helped man the counter with Thomas and Mesut, leaving the familiar, solitary comfort of his kitchen to count out cookies and deal with customers.

To be honest, he didn’t mind the change of pace nearly as much as he had expected to. His old memories of working behind the counter were suffused with an imprecise sense of dread, a constant tugging feeling of being stretched too thin, like a sheet of strudel pastry about to rip. Every interaction with a customer meant sacrificing more time that could have been spent baking, and every minute in front of the ovens meant foregoing another sale he could scarcely afford to miss. 

Now, though, with Thomas manning the other till and Mesut taking care of the coffee orders, things went much more smoothly. After his grand (if suspect from a health code perspective) romantic gesture, Thomas had returned from an impromptu “smoke break” with an interesting constellation of red marks and a renewed focus on his work that Philipp appreciated. For his part, Mesut seemed equally determined to make a good impression in order to sway Philipp’s judgment about the whole spoken word thing. Together, the three of them settled into an easy, almost instinctive rhythm, ringing up customers and fulfilling orders with speed and professionalism. 

Counting out change for a matronly woman in a blue hat, Philipp cast a casual eye down at the cash register. It was, he recalled, the same one this morning where he’d seen the red-and-white scarf.

“Hey,” he said to Thomas at his next free moment. “Did someone come and claim their scarf?”

Thomas glanced up from where he was weighing a batch of springerle on their old-fashioned behemoth of a scale. “What scarf?”

“The one that was next to the register -- I saw it this morning.”

“Oh, that didn’t belong to a customer,” Thomas said. “That was Basti’s.”

“I guess he must have left it here overnight.” Philipp frowned. It wasn’t like Bastian to forget an item of winter clothing -- he was the hen mother among them, fretting over exposed ears and fingertips and clucking about catching cold. Something must have been on his mind. 

Philipp’s mind drifted to Bastian’s classes, and all the useful information he was undoubtedly learning at this very moment -- information that would come in handy if he ever, say, made the decision to start his own bakery somewhere else. And hadn’t Bastian mentioned something about presenting a project today? 

Philipp drew himself up, cutting short his train of thought. No use in dwelling on things he couldn’t change, he told himself, and allowed his natural instinct towards ruthless pragmatism to take over, guiding his hands and thoughts to safer, more prosaic ground.

At the next lull in service, Philipp instead turned his attention to the shop. There was something deeply satisfying, he mused, about watching people enjoy the things he’d made. In the kitchen, surrounded by the tools and materials of his own creativity, it was easy to forget the inevitable end result of a well-baked roll, or perfectly set custard. It all risked becoming an academic exercise, a set of practice drills without a real match to follow.

Here, though, he could see the effect his efforts had on people: from the older woman enjoying her cup of coffee with a sticky bun, to her grandson sitting next to her, devouring a pretzel nearly the size of his head. 

His attention drifted in particular to two men sharing a small table in the corner, their chairs tucked close to one another. Philipp recognized them from their advertising photograph, which hung in the window of their office just down the block -- _Klose & Hitzlsperger, Rechtsanwälte und Steuerberater._ It seemed they were more than just partners in law, to go by their clasped hands and the soft gazes they shared. Philipp watched as what looked like the elder of the two, under the pretense of reaching for the sugar bowl, brushed his lips across the other's cheek. 

Something in Philipp's chest opened up at the sight. They didn't look that much older than him, objectively speaking, but their easy intimacy and the way they seemed so settled with one another made him feel like a child, trapped in time. 

He'd always wondered how people did that. Not the being in a relationship part so much, but the other bits: finding someone to love, choosing them from among the ten thousand strangers that crossed one's path every day and gathering the courage to catch them by the sleeve. Knowing that you’d made the right choice, beyond any contingency plan or insurance policy. Where had he been, when everyone else was learning how to do all that?

A hand settled on his arm. Philipp startled, his reverie broken. 

Mesut gave him a knowing look, and patted his bicep. "Life is very long, when you're lonely," he said.

Philipp nodded, letting his words sink in. 

"Wait, did you just quote The Smiths at me?"

Mesut shrugged, and poured another latte.

 

**

 

**18:45**

With the early winter sunset, the light in the shop grew ever rounder and more golden, as if in intentional defiance of the bleakness outside. By the time Philipp had finished closing up and prepping for tomorrow, the invisible barrier against the outside world seemed practically impenetrable.

He had bid Thomas and Mesut goodbye in turn: the former, with a mild admonishment to try and avoid any controlled substances in tomorrow’s cupcakes; and the latter to the company of the notorious Sami, who came to pick Mesut up on the back of his motorbike. Philipp wasn't sure how he could credibly organize a spoken word reading given that he seemed scarcely more talkative than Mesut, but there was a quiet, appealing air of strength about him, and he looked at Mesut like he was carved out of infinitely precious metals, so Philipp figured he was probably all right. (Spoken word. Philipp shuddered at the thought -- all the while knowing he was doomed to acquiesce.)

Now, there was nothing keeping him from going home as well. It had been, by any accounting, a very long day, the latest in a series of long days that stretched back almost as long as Philipp could remember. By all rights, he ought to be halfway home by now, halfway to cold leftovers and a warm bed. And yet, here he was. 

For lack of an alternative, he picked up a wash rag, wetting it under the faucet. There was an old stain on one of the kitchen counters that had been there since before Philipp had bought the shop, an amebic discoloration several shades darker than the wood grain butcher block surface and shaped like an old principality that didn’t exist anymore. With consistent effort over the years, he’d managed to halve its size, but it persisted, as unrelenting as the weather. He’d almost come to respect it as a worthy adversary.

He grabbed a canister of bleach from the service closet, and patted the deck oven on his way past. “Tonight’s the night,” he said. “You’ll see.”

The repetitive scrubbing motion worked almost like his own, pragmatic yoga, soothing his thoughts and replacing them with a deep calmness. Only the sound of the door roused him from his meditation. 

“We’re closed,” he called out, before realizing that it was the back door, and not the front, that had opened.

Bastian stood in the threshold, his cheeks ruddy and his eyes bright. “Hey,” he said. He crossed the room in three long strides and stood in front of Philipp, almost expectantly. 

Philipp dropped the rag. It seemed like the least he could do. A part of him felt like he was still in a trance. “Don’t you have class?” 

“The professor let us out early, on account of the holidays.”

“Oh. Well, I’m all closed up, basically, so you really didn’t need to come back to help.” 

“That’s not why I came back,” Bastian said slowly.

“Oh,” Philipp repeated. 

“Here.” Bastian thrust out his right hand. The scarf from this morning was wrapped around his fist. “This is for you.”

Philipp reached out to take the scarf, and their fingers overlapped. He realized, quite suddenly, that he didn’t want to let go, so he didn’t.

Bastian didn’t pull away either. “I bought it yesterday from one of the stalls in the Christmas market. I was going to take it home to wrap it, but I forgot, and I just -- wanted you to have it. Look,” he said, and gently turned their clasped hands over to reveal the little Bayern Munich crest at one fringed end.

Philipp swallowed. He remembered Thomas and his cupcakes, the cold night outside and suddenly he knew where he’d been, when everyone else in the world had been learning how to fall in love. 

He’d been right here.

Bastian was still watching him carefully, but for once, Philipp didn’t feel careful. He dragged his gaze up the strong line of Bastian’s throat, and used the shared length of scarf to reel him in. Bastian gave a sound, and let himself be pulled. He made the same sound again when Philipp kissed him, only softer. He tasted, impossibly, like winter and sugar. 

“Thank you,” Philipp said, catching his lips once more.

Bastian chuckled. The sound vibrated through Philipp's body, fizzing and rising like yeast. 

“Anytime, boss.”

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Yuletide recipient, I hope you don't mind that I took the idea of Philipp Lahm as a baker (as well as a few of the other character cues) from your [livejournal.](http://louis-quatorze.livejournal.com/780851.html#comments) It was such a cute idea that I couldn't help but go with it!
> 
> All errors of spelling, grammar and baking accuracy are mine. Thank you a million times over to penniform for the speedy beta -- you are a lifesaver! I'd also like to give my heartfelt thanks to the small army of people who helped me with my German NT characterization; I will thank you each specifically after author reveals!


End file.
